Day 629 – Henry Time

March 22, 2016March 22, 20162 Comments

This weekend my sister Jan and I tagged teamed my sweet grandchildren Henry and Livia. Henry slowed down enough for me to sketch him watching Care Bears and playing with his cars his gramy bought him at Mc Donald’s and Publixs.

His dad asked me if I bought him a car at Publixs and I said Yes of course he asked for one and a rabbit for his sister and flowers for his mom but we knew daddy didn’t want anything but that ham we cooked!!

They also went to the zoo. When I asked Henry what his favorite part of the zoo was he told me you Gramy. What a kid. Lol.

Last a bit of ink fun with my Kuretake brush pen. I just like the quote. And it’s true. Hard to be perfect.

I got the quote from the strathmore art on line sketchbook Art Ninja Graham Smiths class. Check it out. It’s free. I wish I drew glad as well as he does. Here is his website.

Thanks for reading.

Margaret xxx

Reasons.

Day 628 – Costco Love!

March 21, 2016Leave a comment

Urban sketching at Costco. And NO I did not eat a hotdog when I drew this. I usually do though. Probably good snacks this day whxib everybody knows are calorie free right?!

I did hide in the corner behind my purse which is of course big enough to carry my sketchbook and pants.

Tip: when you take the grandchildren to the zoo you don’t want your bevy purse loaded with sketching stuff when you pick up a 45 lb kid to look at the snakes Be sure to take your over the shoulder sketch purse with sketching stuff and the other important thing MONEY for the gift shop train and carousel!! 😋

These people were drawn as we all stood in the return line. I love to buy stuff and bring it back to Costco. They ALWAYS take stuff bought there back no questions other than can I Have your members card please. I do LOVE Costco!!

Off to class. Need to go by Costco and fill up. Gas is always 20-25 cents cheaper!! And Booking a trip to Paris and maybe Lindon and Dublin via Iceland. No time to list colors but I did use the usual ones.

Thanks for reading.

Margaret xxx

Day 451 – A few Paintings

October 4, 2015Leave a comment

Henry – background Quin gold. Sofa Quin sienna and Quin burnt orange – skin Quin coral and French yellow ochre

Got the nasty virus still that half of the people in Augusta seem to have but forced myself to paint some in my coloring book aka my ink sketches.

About Henry sketch. Really like the way the darks make his legs pop and take shape. My favorite of the ones I painted yesterday.

Inktober day 4 – Forgot to take a pic of the black and white sketch. Oops.

Random customer at the inner bean sitting less than three Feet from me. So absorbed in her phone she didn’t notice I was drawing her.

Drawn with Noodler Konrad and carbon platinum black ink.

Hair – burnt sienna Quin burnt orange. Shirt cobalt and inathradone. Skin Quin coral and yellow ochre. Grey is cerulean and burnt sienna.

A reindeer head that was over the cabin fireplace last weekend. Why a reindeer in the western North Carolina mountains?! NO idea! A friend told me he was a moose but we decided he was a reindeer probably from Norway or Sweden. Along way from home.

Quin gold and burnt sienna wall. Same with the splatters. Grey is cerulean and burnt sienna. Piemonite and cobalt used in the shadows.

Out my back door. Glad to report the Savannah is still units riverbanks!!

Thanks for looking!! Back to watching the BIG Flood in nearby Columbia and Charleston and glad Augusta dogged the bullet.

Stay safe and dry my chickadees!

Margaret glued to WIS Columbia. Nope no football here!!

Day 451 – A few Paintings

October 4, 2015Leave a comment

Henry – background Quin gold. Sofa Quin sienna and Quin burnt orange – skin Quin coral and French yellow ochre

Got the nasty virus still that half of the people in Augusta seem to have but forced myself to paint some in my coloring book aka my ink sketches.

About Henry sketch. Really like the way the darks make his legs pop and take shape. My favorite of the ones I painted yesterday.

Inktober day 4 – random customer at the inner bean sitting less than three Feet from me. So absorbed in her phone she didn’t notice I was drawing her.

Drawn with Noodler Konrad and carbon platinum black ink.

Hair – burnt sienna Quin burnt orange. Shirt cobalt and inathradone. Skin Quin coral and yellow ochre. Grey is cerulean and burnt sienna.

Quin gold and burnt sienna wall. Same with the splatters. Grey is cerulean and burnt sienna. Piemonite and cobalt used in the shadows.

Out my back door. Glad to report the Savannah is still units riverbanks!!

Thanks for looking!! Back to watching the BIG Flood in nearby Columbia and Charleston and glad Augusta dogged the bullet.

Stay safe and dry my chickadees!

Margaret glued to WIS Columbia. Nope no football here!!

Day 422?? Painting

September 4, 2015September 4, 2015Leave a comment

Update. Painted for a couple more hours.

So far

This painting had been fermenting in my brain all week. And really ever since I saw it. Love the grunge look of it.

And always liked this photo of my middle son. I started over for two reasons. The first one was on 140# and he had no feet. This is on a full sheet Crescent watercolor board. Heavy stuff.

The feet thing did it for me. Lol. Do over. He needed feet. And I had trouble with his head. Still too big. As I said on my fb wall watercolor is a roll of the die. Sometimes you win sometimes not. Like the new one better anyway.

Here’s the sketch of it. All those grey lines worried me. Hard to have transparent color and those lines not show. I think they are going away. I HOPE.

The face was a hash of lines.

Professor wants you to paint the drawing with a brush. 😳 I don’t know any WC people who do that but I was game to try.

I did draw a little with a grey watercolor pencil because toooo many grey WC lines. I erased all the grey lines I could with my moo erasure from cheap joes. We love our moo erasures.

Love the pants and the drip down the neck of the tshirt. The right arm is too wide but I think I can correct that with the background.

Pray for me !👍😃

Last page.

Thanks for reading. Back to painting.

Margaret xxx

Day 327 – a few more planes

June 1, 2015Leave a comment

If it was hard drawing a plane with one wing a biplane doubles the opportunities to screw up. Oh my gosh. Hard to draw. I actually lost a propellor. And all kinds of struts and ties. I think they are there now. I hope. Hate for it to fly apart.

My grandson Henry loved this little yellow plane. He has watched the short video of it at least 20 times. He wanted me to draw it for him. So we did.

First problem. Do not paint with a two year old and not expect ho to add his favorite color red to a yellow planes wing. Oops. I drew another one do him to paint and he was happy.

Then the yellows were a problem. Cad yellow was not Orange enough. I finally used a dab of Indian yellow gouache. I have a white marker that I used to add the reflection on the bottom of the wing and some of the wires. Why was there a reflection there?! No idea.

Last problem. No idea what kind of biplane this cutey is.

Here are Henrys paintings with a little help from his gramy. The yellow plane was painted with my Winsor Newton and Daniel Smith watercolors. The one on the right was painted with his Watercolors. I never could get a dark black to draw the plane. So the next time you want to save a little money and buy student grade paints don’t. What if your grandson I mean you paint a masterpiece with the cheap paint?! It won’t last forever. That would be sad.

Thanks for reading.

Margaret XXX

Day 326 Flying High

May 31, 2015Leave a comment

Went out to lunch yesterday with my sister in law Jan at the Peachtree DeKalb Airport where they were preparing for their Spring Open House. We watched the planes come

And go during lunch. Then I decided to draw a few. All their antique WW2 planes lined up asking to be drawn.

These were drawn on site with a Noodler Creaper Ahab in my Stillman and Birt Alpha painted with watercolor and touches of white get pen.

The Grumann Avenger Torpedo Bomber was the first one I drew. A nice Navy blue. How could u resist it shining in the sun, saying draw me?!

Sometimes crosshatching the background fixes mistakes but NOT this one. I think A bad line would have been better. Planes are hard to draw because there are so many angles going every which way. Typical perspective rules apply but don’t seem too. Easy to get off track.

I tried to stay on track by looking at the angles of the real wings compared with the angles I drew on the page starting with the fusillade then adding wings and tails. As it is I forgot to add the tail gun. So many small details it’s easy to miss a few.

When I got home I looked up the plants to try to figure out which ones they were. The Grumann Avenger was the plane Pres George Bush flew in WW2.

The navy blue is a mix of ultramarine and black a color I rarely use. It was hard to get a deep deep blue without the black.

Next was the infamous WW 2 Mitsubishi Zero famed for dogfights in and kamikaze missions in the Pacofoc campaign. We thought surely it was not a zero but it had that big red circle on it. We knew what that meant. I looked it up and yes it was. This was fairly easy to draw. Profile views are easter even in a plane. Even the military green was easy. A bright green mixed with yellow ochre. Piece of cake. Success at last. I added a touch of Quin burnt sienna to the cad red of the circle.

Not sure what kind of plane this is. A WW2 Army Spotter plane I was told. Of course now the tail says USAF. Hmm I noticed that as I was drawing.

I used the same greens on this plane as the zero. The gold is Quin gold. Yellow ochre was just being when I tried it. Grey is ultramarine and Quin burnt sienna.

More planes tomorrow and a comparison of paint.

Thanks for reading.

Margaret XXX

Day 325 – Dog Days

May 30, 2015Leave a comment

dog sitting my sons pit bulls.

Bear is always a challenge to paint with his brindle fur. First he was painted with a mix of Quin gold and Quin burnt sienna. Then I daubed in burnt umber and ultramarine for the blackish brindle in his fur. I also added the shadow under him when the fur was still wet. And that’s all I did. It was all wet on wet except the dab of muddy Quin red in his ears.

Livia is always interesting to draw with her curves. And fairly easy to paint. A wash of Quin gold, burnt umber shadows and burnt umber and ultramarine to make a black for her muzzle.

Thanks for reading.

Margaret XXX

Day 318 just a quick post

May 24, 20152 Comments

because I am busy painting. More about that tomorrow.

Cropping can be a good thing. This was a practice sketch. A warm up for painting this sketch. I did not like the way the drawing went.

I liked this sketch much better than the one in the first picture.

This is the whole spread uncut. The sketch of Livia on the left is pretty bad. A warm up for the next sketch. But the good thing about a bad sketch or painting is that it liberates you to slap paint around and have fun. Loved making the drips and applying the sheer colors. Think it helped with this painting. I did the drippy baby painting first. Do you see a connection? Sometimes the most interesting painting gets done on a painting that you no longer care about the way it turns out. The fun stuff in this bad sketch are the dots of the hair and bow on her head the washes and drips from the dress and the luminous center of the spread. Really like that luminous glow and. I used all of that in the lady in the white dress.

Anyway that’s my theory and I am sticking to it. Try it. Let me know what you think!

Thanks for reading.
Margaret XXX

Day 314 – More Grandkids Paintings

May 20, 20155 Comments

Love the background on this spread. Scroll down to see how it was started. This is a practice painting for the next one. I think she needs a neck or her heads too big. Or maybe her head just looks pasted on becaus it has no shadows around the baby’s chin. I think that’s the problem. What do you think?!

Pleased with the way Henry turned out on the right.

Definitely more work required. Liking the drips and splatters which I actually purposefully made. Stay tuned I will show u how but not tonite. Too late posting. Sorry.

TIP: This is how I started the background in the first double spread. A wash of several soft colors Quin red Quin gold yellow yellow ochre burnt sienna cerulean and mineral Violet.

Then u tone it down by painting more washes of a variety of colors over it which is how the background in the first one was done. Just don’t go dark with your washes. You can do that later!

Here she is so far. More work required. No drips and no splatters yet. The soft pink skin is made from Quin coral and yellow ochre. Hope the dress is not too dark.

Decided to make this a journal page of our weekend together.

Henry’s head reshaped from yesterday’s post. Now I think he needs more back on his head but at least it’s not shaped like a football helmet.

I added some drips and some dark darks behind his head and under his arms to this one.

Don’t know why I didn’t do any drips and splatters. Have a few paintings from spring fling that I did drip and splatter. Wondering if that is because the kids paintings are more important to me than the others? I think so.

Do you find it freeing not to care if you mess up a painting? Sometimes the most fun happens with watercolor then.

Thanks for reading.

Margaret XXX